Homeschool Morning Time Menus with Free Printables

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Our homeschool morning time menus with free printables.

I have loved implementing the use of morning time menus over the past handful of years. It is a great way to gather all the materials needed ahead of time. This ensures we actually so many of the riches that Charlotte Mason says to spread a feast of! A few weeks of preparation in the summer makes for smooth days ahead.

We use Ambleside Online (which is an amazing, free Charlotte Mason curriculum). So our homeschool morning time menus are geared towards what is scheduled there. Even if you don’t use AO, I hope this post will be helpful in seeing how I make our morning time menus.

If you do use Ambleside Online or are interested in how we make it work for our family, you can check out a post about that here.

I fill our menus (which are literally restaurant menus) full of the beautiful riches in our Charlotte Mason homeschool. I get the menus from Amazon and the best price is a bulk order of 10. So find some friends to split them with, and it makes it a pretty reasonable price each.

Please note that this post contains affiliate links and I may possibly earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you as I am an Amazon associate.

We use one per child and one for mom. I will be adding another one for our toddler this year. Otherwise, she will try to grab someone else’s to feel like a big kid. But I will put other items inside for her since she is only 2.

What is Inside Our Homeschool Morning Time Menus

I put our hymns, folksongs, art study, pictures of the artists and composers we will be studying inside of our homeschool morning time menus. As well as recitation/ memory work pages. The back page on my menu has everything I need to remember to keep our morning flow moving. I’ll share more on that in a bit.

Cover Page Designs

The front page I found while googling for Charlotte Mason’s Students Motto. Julie at AmblesideWonderland.com made these ones that I am using this year. In previous years I have put a calendar in the front spot. That was nice for my children to follow along with what day it is. I’m curious to see if they will miss it or not. I usually use these calendars. Sometimes I print them out in black and white so my kids get to color them in. They actually like that better than printed in color!

Artist and Composers

Composers

We are a part of a small Riches co-op this coming year. So our artist and composer sheet looks different than the one I will offer here for you to go along with AO. My friend RaeAnna has an amazing resource for composer study called the Composer Study Companion. I am jumping into her classes since I am local to her, so that is why my menu sheet is different. She also has these great little booklets that each child can work on about specific composers. She has four volumes, with three composers in each book.

Artist and Art Study

We will be following Ambleside Online’s artists and art study rotation. Along with the menu insert to see who the people are that we are studying, I also print out the art studies for the year. I only print one copy of each art print, as I display them around the home.

I slip the first terms prints behind the menu insert of my morning time menu. That way, when it is time to do art study, I just slide out the next one and pass it around to observe. (I keep the other 2 terms in my homeschool binder.)

I use A Humble Place’s picture study resources as she follows Ambleside Online’s artist rotation. The AO prints are free for download and already formatted to be printed.

(Wondering where to print all these? I’ll cover that at the end of this post.)

Folk Songs and Hymns

If you use Ambleside Online, make sure you are a part of the Facebook group. There are so many helpful files in that group, and I personally find it easier to navigate than the forum. I usually make my own files and share them there. But this year, someone beat me to it! If you search within the group for hymns 2021 this file that I have above in the picture should come up. (I can’t share the file here since it is not mine.)

I print off one copy for each student, keep them stacked in monthly order and slip one whole stack of them into one menu sleeve. This is also what I do with the hymns. This makes it super simple when a new month comes. Just take off the top song and continue on! I did one year not knowing this trick and it would take me halfway through the next month to take the time to restock them. This is life-changing. lol

Folk Songs are ready! If you are part of the AO Facebook group, you can search my name (Joanna Overly) and “Folk Songs 2021-2022 and they should come up. Since they are specifically under copyright from AO, I can’t share a direct link to them here.

If you have trouble locating them, please reach out to me and I’ll help you.

Memory Verses and Recitation

I made up these memory verse sheets last year from something we got from Samaritan’s Purse. If you prefer to not take a page in your morning time menus, you can request a bookmark version here.

For my family, looking at the words helps to memorize something. And, since the menus lay flat so nicely, it is an easy item to give your child to use a verse or two as copy work. So, I like having it typed out and in each person’s menu.

Recitation is something we need to work on this year. I read this when I was looking into it more. I decided that for my family to be successful, I needed to put it in our morning menus.

Recitation is supposed to be selections that the students choose, but since it’s something newer to us I made a few choices for Psalms, Bible verses, and hymns. Each of my students will still choose their own poems to recite. My oldest daughters are in years 2 and 4, so if you have similar ages, these pages may work well for you also.

In the printout, the first term has 1 Psalm and 1 Bible verse, then the next two terms have 2 Psalms. I decided since we will still be working our way through the Gospel Alphabet, my children will be able to choose one of those as another verse. (Even though they are much shorter, they are great passages.)

Extras

Our last couple of pages are filled with things for our co-op and a map that we will work on. (Currently working on the U.S.A)

Some other ideas to finish off your morning time menu with could be specifics to do with the terms nature study. Or leave a space blank for now and at the end of the term, let each study choose their favorite print from the artist study. The possibilities are endless and can be filled however you’d like.

The Final Page of My Homeschool Morning Time Menus

This last page is only on the back of my own menu, although it may be useful for my older children to see the planned rhythm. This page is the culmination of all my thoughts and the breakdown of how things go. There are so many times in the morning that I need a little guidance in the order of the day, and this does it all including our loop schedule.

Although I know each family will be different, I will include the printable in case you want to print it off and re-work it. Feel free to scratch things out, circle things you want to include in your own home, and work it for what’s best for you. Just click the image for the download. I use Canva to make all the pretty things.

Where To Print Your Pages to Fill the Morning Time Menus

Now, you may be thinking, this would be so handy! But you’re worried about the cost to print SO MUCH. Especially so many pages in color! How do we do it?

We use HP Instant Ink which is an ink subscription. This is not an ad, but I had heard so many other homeschooling mamas share about it, that I finally tried it. I’ve had it for over a year and it has been awesome. The plan I choose is about $3 a month for 50 pages. If you don’t use all the pages, they rollover. With my plan, I can roll over up to 150 pages. So all year long, I am able to print what is needed, and then when summer hits, I use up the roll-over pages.

I have a referral code here that gives you a free month if you’d like to try it. (It also gives me a free month.) But really, even if you don’t use the code, I still think it’s an awesome program for homeschoolers.

You do need to have an HP printer in order to use the program. This is the printer we have and we’ve had it since 2016. Before that, we were burning through one almost once a year.

If you don’t have an HP printer or just need some other options, here are a few. 

The Homeschool Printing Company is a budget friendly printing service. They do get pretty backed up though, so keep that in mind. Their customer service is great if you reach out to them with any questions. 

Check out local printing companies. When we lived in Redding, Ca, McDonald’s Budget Printing had great prices. 

Office Depot is always handy in that it is everywhere. Although, not always the most budget-friendly for large orders.

I do use Office Depot to print my artist studies on card stock. And for all three terms of the year, it’s about $13.

If you want to check out a few of my other homeschooling posts, this one is where I share about How to Start a Nature Group or this post is where I share about what we pack in our Nature Study Backpacks.

Or check out my post, How to Homeschool Multiple Ages with 10 Tips here.

This blog post has gotten a lot of attention over time.

Frequently asked questions

Where do you get your menu covers from?

I get a larger size from Amazon like these ones.

But I have seen people just use a 3 ring binder with plastic protection sheets and make a morning binder that way!

What’s the difference between morning time, morning basket time, morning meeting, classical morning menu, and circle time?

I believe they all are different words to express the same idea. I know that the first time the phrase “Morning time” was created to be used in this fun way was from Cindy Rollins, so she is an obviously great resource for more information.

Other favorite morning time resources are picture books for read alouds.

We like to incorporate them once in a while for our younger children, but really even our older kids still enjoy them too! Read Aloud Revival has all sorts of great lists if you need some help selecting books.

We also are now implementing the Simply Charlotte Mason scripture memory system that you can learn more about here.

An easy way to cover hymn study is through Happy Hymnody. I have friends who love this resource. Personally, I just make my own song sheets and follow along with my friend Hannah over on her youtube channel Folks and Hymns.

I hope you have enjoyed this time to look over our morning time plans for the past school year. It’s like sharing a bit of our homeschool day with you like you’ve joined us in our living room. Morning time is very much a part of our family culture now and I hope it blesses you as a fellow homeschool mom. If you have a large family and would like to read some tips I have for homeschooling a large family, you can find them here, How to Homeschool Multiple Ages: with 10 Tips. Let me know in the comments below if you will add anything to part of your morning time routine!

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